


Babel

by HopeCoppice



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Biblical Allusions (Abrahamic Religions), Gen, It's just a discorporation don't worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:12:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22166185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeCoppice/pseuds/HopeCoppice
Summary: Crowley wants to know how they're doing that fancy brickwork - but it's not a great time to be at the top of this particular tower.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 74





	Babel

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this in one go because it felt like ages since I'd posted... Apologies if it's a bit unpolished. Enjoy!

“Thought I’d find you here.” Crawly spoke directly into Aziraphale’s ear, just for the pleasure of making him jump.

“Crawly! What are you doing here? I thought you’d be… somewhere else.”

“Nowhere else to be, angel. Everyone’s here.” That wasn’t strictly true. What _was_ true was that after the Flood, the humans had stuck pretty close together, wandering across the land in search of new places to settle. Crawly and Aziraphale had both had to report back to their respective Head Offices - Hell was, obviously, quite concerned about the suggestion that all sinners had been wiped off the earth, and Heaven was keen to be reassured that they _had_ been - and then Crawly had stayed out of the way for a while, keeping an eye on his little clutch of stolen children and making sure they didn’t catch the attention of either Heaven or Hell. He’d been drawn back eventually, though, curious about what his angel might be doing now.

“Getting quite good at this building lark, aren’t they?”

“Yes. Yes, it’s very inspiring,” Aziraphale told him, “very clever, some of the things they’re doing with the bricks.”

“Well. I turn my back for a few days-”

“It’s been rather more than a few days-”

“-they’ll be building nebulas soon, at this rate.” He peered up at the tower being constructed before him. “Well, looks like they’ll be able to reach, any road.”

“It is rather tall, isn’t it?” Aziraphale agreed. “They’re doing some very fancy things with the brickwork, every few floors.”

“Yeah?” Crawly squinted until he could make out the change in pattern part-way up the tower. “Oh, very nice. How are they pulling that off?”

“I’ve no idea, I’m afraid.”

“Well, then. I’m going up to have a look.”

“Do be careful,” he heard the angel call out behind him, “er- foul fiend-”

Crawly scaled the tower using a combination of scaffolding, free-climbing, and, once he realised they were there, the stairs inside the structure. When he reached the top, he looked around in delight before perching on a partially-built wall and peering down. The people below looked as tiny and insignificant as ants from here; it was almost like flying. Looking up, he felt he could reach up and brush the clouds.

He was just asking one of the builders how they were doing the fancy bits when he realised that the sky had got very dark all of a sudden. He glanced up at the black clouds just above his head and grimaced; he’d never liked rain, especially since the Flood. It seemed the people below him were equally uncertain, because the crowds were gradually moving towards the tower, crowding into the unfinished structure to take shelter from the oncoming storm.

“Well, that all looks a bit omin-”

Then lightning struck, knocking the demon from his precarious perch. And Crawly fell, and fell, and fell.

* * *

Getting a new body out of Hell was not exactly like getting blood from a stone, a party trick Crawly was fond of performing when he was bored and wanted to sow some panic. It was more like getting a new body from a bunch of demons who wanted to question your every decision, your value to your cause, and how much pain you could withstand while they were getting it ready.

By the time he returned to Earth, then, Crawly was in no mood to be trifled with, and yet everybody in the world seemed to want to trifle with him.

“Hey, you, hi- where am I?” He was expecting the human to be confused, expecting to be asked if he’d bashed his head - and he had, he dreaded to think what had happened to his empty corporation when it eventually landed at the base of the tower. What he wasn’t expecting was for the human to let loose a string of gobbledegook.

“Er. Thanks. I’ll ask someone else. Excuse me- could you just tell me where we are?”

But the next human didn’t make any sense either. Or the next. Or the next.

Crawly retreated into the wilderness to try to gather his thoughts. Could the lightning strike have scrambled his brain so thoroughly that it was broken even in this new corporation? It wasn’t long before he sensed the familiar angelic presence that had to be Aziraphale, and he followed it in the hope that he might understand another occult being, somehow.

He found Aziraphale standing by the ruins of an old building, long lost to the ravages of time. Judging by the stone blocks scattered around in the desert, something violent had happened to whatever the building had once been. Aziraphale was standing beside a pile of similar blocks, just a few in a row with a final block laid on top, as if to mark a spot.

“Buried your treasure here, huh, angel?”

Aziraphale flinched, then jumped, and finally turned to face him. “Crawly!”

“It’s a bit obvious,” the demon continued, undeterred, and then realised he’d understood his name. “Er- am I making sense to you?”

“Yes. Yes, of course you are, you’re speaking- oh, didn’t Hell teach you the new languages when they gave you that body?”

“No. New languages? What new languages?”

“Of course. You’re Hell’s earthly agent, they wouldn’t know- you wouldn’t- oh, dear. I’m not sure I _ought_ to explain, really. Passing information, and all that.”

“But you want to. You know you want to tell me.”

“They all speak different languages now. The humans.”

“Oh. Oh, is that why I didn’t understand them? Good. I thought I’d fried my brain for a moment there. Knocked my head a bit too hard, perhaps.”

“Well, you did. But that's not the reason. Anyway, there are all sorts of different languages now. And the humans have, er, spread out a bit.”

“Right. Well, that’s going to be a pain, isn’t it? That why you buried your treasure? Because really, you need to work on your concealment - if it’s this easy for you to spot, it’ll be easy for someone else to find, too-”

“It’s a grave.”

“Oh.” Crawly might be a demon, but he wasn't completely heartless. “Oh. Sorry. Why’d you let me go rambling on about treasure, then?”

“You weren’t wrong.” Aziraphale smiled sadly and turned his back on the grave. “Still. You’re here now. More important than a corpse, anyway. Certainly more irritating.”

“I do my best,” Crawly admitted. “So, these languages. How many of them are there? Hard to learn?”

“Not if you’ve a competent teacher,” Aziraphale assured him.

Angel and demon sat by the grave of Aziraphale’s unknown treasure - Crawly wasn’t jealous, of course, just curious, but the angel didn’t make any further mention of his lost friend - and spent several days working together to get Crawly up to speed.

“Should you be helping me?” Crawly asked, and Aziraphale shrugged.

“I’m an angel. Helping is what I do, isn’t it?” He grimaced. “Why? Do you think I’m doing the wrong thing?”

“I don’t think you _could_ ,” Crawly admitted, and Aziraphale smiled gently.

“Good. Right, then. Now say it again in the language we were just working on.”

It wasn’t until Aziraphale was satisfied with what he’d learned - enough to work out the rest on his own, the angel claimed, in the course of his temptations and other interactions with humanity - that they parted ways. The angel walked away from the grave of his treasure with barely a glance over his shoulder, and he was almost out of sight before Crawly recognised the distinctive brickwork of the building they’d been working in the shadow of. 

Fancy patterned masonry every few floors. The unfinished top torn away and scattered in the desert around them, and the base sunk into the sand, obscuring the doors.

_The tower._

It seemed Crawly hadn’t been the only casualty that day; the tower itself had come tumbling down just as sure as the demon had. Judging by the grave Aziraphale had been visiting, someone else had been killed, too - and all, no doubt, because the Almighty had seen fit to strike down a demon bold enough to venture towards the clouds. He had doomed all that hard work to ruin, and he wouldn’t be surprised if God had lashed out and caused all this language nonsense as well.

Crawly resolved to stay out of the sky and firmly at ground level for the forseeable future. It would be better for everyone.


End file.
